Dance Central 3 Designer: Kinect Developers Need to Do Better Than “Oh, It Works”

Kotaku, Evan Narcisse- "Last week, I talked to the people who make the best Kinect games. The topic of discussion? One of the worst Kinect games.

I chatted with Dance Central 3 project lead Matt Boch what he thought about the state of Kinect game development, starting off with the mind-numbingly wretched Steel Battalion. Back when Capcom's bungle came out months ago, it was plain to see that the game simply didn't work the way it was supposed to. How does this happen, I asked Boch?"

[edonus]

I feel kinects immediate big fix is stop that whole let the player experiment and discover there own way. That has killed lots of excellent kinect games. Most of the games ppl think are pure utter trash is because they just cant play them. Steel Battalion is a perfect example, it had the most bare bones tutorial you could ever make for a game and the game was very advanced I would equate it to you take a someone thats learning to ride a bike and you put them on a Harley. Same thing with kinect Star Wars most of the reviews didnt even understand most of the modes.

I agree with just about everything he has said and have actually been saying most of it myself. I have always said that kinect cant just be shoe horned or bolted on to existing genres and control schemes it has its own strengths that should be exploited. I would have been a little easier on devs and their testing user interface testing because most of these games are the first attempt of the particular game.

Rise of Nightmares played in an encouraging environment full of testers and ppl that want to participate in the games development will only get you so much feedback. The public needs to feel the games and give feedback. Like he said as format is around longer the devs will learn what works well for people and what doesnt. Once everything is more standard you wont see issues like you see now.

[mcstorm]

I agree with what you say. The biggest problem with Steel Battalion is you need to have the right setup for it to work but if you lucky enough to have the right setup in your room it works very well.

I think MS are onto something good with Kinect but Kinect as it is now was brought in to open the 360 up to be a console for everyone. It has done that and im sure the next xbox will be built around Kinect rather than the other way round and as a new gen comes out there will be new IP's that will look at Kinect and how they can build games with Kinect in them rather than putting Kinect in old IP's.

[Brettman2008]

A game like Dance Central doesn't have to be lag free or super accurate. Most people probably wouldn't know if their dancing was being accurately assessed. However, a game like Steel Battalion needs accurate, reasonably lag free controls and the absence of such is a killer. I think there will always be a limitation with this hands free technology. Some games, like Dance Central, are very suitable and games like first person shooters mostly impractical. Although the use of hand gestures and voice control may be useful for some first person shooters in addition to the controller. I think that Kinect 2 will be virtually lag free and at a higher resolution which should allow it to reach its potential, as limiting as it may be.

Aside from this, I have Kinect and it is great fun playing with the kids. There are some very good games for it, including Dance Central, Kinect Sports series and Kinect Fruit Ninja etc.

[edonus]

You know kinect really doesnt have lag. Not that there arent games that have lag but its not because of kinect.
There are 2 things one is the fps. Kinect records at 30fps, for video 30fps is iffy but for tracking its pretty solid. Basically its saying with will know your position 30 time is 1 second this is solid except for in the most intense practices like a boxing game where you 100 punches in 10 second 30fps will probably catch 70 of them and even at 60fps which kinect 2 is suppose to register at would only catch like 90. Thats just the nature of visual input. but the solution is compensate in design and situations like that are few and far between.

The other thing is translation lag as opposed to in put lag. the jist of it is kinect see you and gets you info with out lag, then the system translating your moves into digital actions of character is were the lag happens. Thats why the devs say kinect takes up so much processing power. They have gotten better with but until kinect2 they will have to design work arounds but that is the job. This is only a big issue when you play game that you control a full avatar, FPS games like RON had almost no lag, Fruit Ninja Happy Action Theatre and Dance central games have no lag because they arent animating anything they are just processing your actions.
Steel Battalion actually isnt laggy and it is ver accurate i'm not sure if you played it or not... its just something you have to learn how to play and they dont tell you anything yet they make it extremely unforgiving it doesnt really nurture a player in to grasping it, it just beats you up until either you learn or you quit. Most ppl quit.

[from the beach]

I was just reading Kotaku's mind-numbingly wretched blog and wondering - is this story another unsubstantiated rumour they'll have to retract in a few hours?

[bakasora]

Just lol

[Psychonaughty]

Having just played Wreckateer it's obvious to me that it's possible to make a fun game work on Kinect, certainly Microsoft has proven it can pull it off, most other developers have been far too half hearted though and their products have mostly ranged from poor to terrible. Hopefully having Kinect 2 out of the box in 720 (as rumoured) will change things for the better.